Remembering the World's Fair - can we still dream big?

Published 10:34 pm, Tuesday, September 20, 2011

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Unlike the viaduct tunnel replacement, for the Space Needle it took just months to get from the drawing board to construction. Here the Needle is seen under construction in 1961. (Photo by John Vallentyne/seattlepi.com file)

A sparkling picture of the Space Needle, set against blue skies on the cover of Life magazine and captioned "Fabulous Fair in Seattle," is still savored 49 years after the city's Century 21 World's Fair.

It was "the best sales tool we had by far," Jay Rockey, the fair's public relations chief, told a commemorative luncheon on Tuesday, attended by ex- and possible future mayors, former governors, and a bevy of aging former journalists who've gone into flackdom.

Our Emerald City remains a surprisingly insecure metropolis. It needs a periodic "fix" of cover stories in national magazines or praise from New York Times critics. Local critics extoll each new project -- the Seattle downtown library, the Olympic Sculpture Garden -- as having the potential to "put this city on the map."

Century 21 was supposed to do that 49 years ago -- and succeeded. It should make us feel easier about the city's identity a decade into the century that it heralded. And it should challenge us to regain an ability to get things done.

The 1962 fair was ginned up by civic leaders marking the half-century anniversary of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, and Tuesday's packed luncheon signaled that the golden anniversary of Century 21 will be an occasion for hoopla.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

Century 21 was "an amazing transforming event" and "a glimpse into the future," moderator C.R. Douglas told the luncheon, put on by HistoryLink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington history. Douglas acknowledged he wasn't born then, but accepts the word of witnesses.

Just about every Washington native in my generation of aging Baby Boomers went to the fair ... and kept on going to the Seattle Center that became Century 21's lasting legacy.

Almost every fair-goer had a great time -- the notable exception was Prince Philip. The notoriously ill-tempered consort of Queen Elizabeth II was abrupt with his hosts and intentionally unimpressed with what he saw. He has spent the last 50 years dispensing rudeness across the globe.

But the Shah of Iran loved us, and we locals were inspired, the more so that an audacious West Coast city had pulled this off.

A kid named Paul Allen was taken with the Science Pavilion, which would become the Pacific Science Center. Cultural institutions found a home in the Opera House. The Space Needle -- inspired when Seattle hotelman Eddie Carlson dined atop Stuttgart's TV tower -- was (and is) a hit and money machine beyond the wildest dreams of its local builders.

We can learn a few things from Century 21. Our civic leaders -- the "long ball hitters" who met for breakfast at the Olympic Hotel -- pulled off a world's fair without being pulled into a morass of process. The Space Needle went months, not years, between conception and construction.

The "Seattle Way" -- consulting everybody about everything -- has its merits. Awful projects were blocked, such as the Bay Freeway linking the Seattle Center to Interstate 5. But ... we've just gone through a 10-year post-earthquake debate on replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, with the mayor a would-be saboteur.

Seattle and the Northwest have a way of revitalizing ourselves that others envy. The timber economy gave way in World War II to aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding. A bold Boeing pioneered passenger jets. The technology economy followed, initially inspired by two former Lakeside students.

Century 21 visitors recognized what he have here. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his family fell in love with our mountains, a love that persists to this day. Sen. John Glenn, the astronaut, years later sang praises of the city he "discovered" at the fair and to which he loved to return.

And of course, there was Elvis. He made a not-very-good movie -- "It Happened at the World's Fair" -- long ago eclipsed by other Seattle-set movies such as "The Fabulous Baker Boys." But he (and Col. Parker) put us on the map.

The bottom-line message of Century 21's anniversary: We've dreamed big dreams in this corner of the country. We have a remarkable record of following through -- but not so much lately.

With government programs being axed, voter initiatives used to block needed improvements and interest groups scrapping with each other, we need a renewed boldness.

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politcs for the P-I since 1973.